Radical
Statistics
Census Information
1) Differences in the 2001 Census
The major procedural changes in the 2001 Census, compared with the 1991 census.
Content and design of the household questionnaire:
- New questions were asked on religion, health, lowest floor level, and the relationship of each household resident to others in the household.
- A redesigned form offered all questions for one person before those for the next person.
- The instructions were changed to include students at their term-time address, to count explicitly those with 'no usual residence', and to prevent visitors from being included other than at their usual residence.
Fieldwork:
- Enumerators were given a pre-printed list of addresses compiled primarily from the Ordnance Survey's product Addresspoint.
- Householders were asked to post back their forms, reducing the number of enumerators by one third and enabling their efforts to be focused on households that had not returned a form.
Processing and validation:
- All forms will be scanned as images and interpreted electronically in an effort to reduce the time taken for processing.
- All responses from all forms were planned to be fully coded and processed.
- Major operations have been contracted to private companies, including the payment of enumerators and the scanning and processing of census forms.
- A wholly redesigned sample post enumeration survey, the Census Coverage Survey, will directly estimate census undercount in 100 areas of the UK.
- The census coverage analysis will be used to enhance the census database through imputation of new records, such that the census outputs are directly consistent with government population estimates for census day.
Output:
- Standard tables will not be based on the output from previous censuses but are restricted to simpler cross-tabulations, with priority for harmonisation across the UK.
New finance will make all standard tables for local output areas available free on the Internet, and give easier access to most other output.
